The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Standards Association publishes an IEEE Standard for Ethernet, IEEE Std 802.3-2015, which will be familiar to those of ordinary skill in the art to which this application pertains. This standard provides a common media access control specification for local area network (LAN) operations at selected speeds from 1 Mb/s to 100 Gb/s over coaxial cable, twisted wire pair cable, fiber optic cable, and electrical backplanes, with various channel signal constellations. As demand continues for ever-higher data rates, extensions to the standard must account for increased channel attenuation and dispersion even as the equalizers are forced to operate at faster symbol rates. One potential course of action employs enhanced equalization techniques, but such techniques should minimize consequent limits on data throughput.